Preethi excited about her second innings

‘Sobha Naidu garu had a unique bond with every student’

Sharing her association with late Sobha Naidu garu, Preethi says that her guru had several hundreds of students. “Each and every student had a unique bond with her. For me, interacting on a day-to-day basis with such an iconic personality was a wonderful experience. Sharing the stage and touring along with her, I have many memories that I will cherish forever. Her journey is very inspirational and she wanted young dancers to know about it,” she says. For many to know about this, a documentary was planned. 

“I was lucky to be managing this project for her. After our class, I would sit by her chair while she narrated incidents from her life starting with her childhood. As I came to know about incidents from her life that shaped her as an artist, her challenges, her achievements, her sacrifices, her family, I would be transported into her world. This whole exercise of working on the documentary inspired me immensely,” she says. After each class, the young dancer went back home thinking about those incidents and how much there was to learn from them. 

Preethi reveals that this whole experience taught her so much about how much goes into the making of an artist and the amount of struggle that goes into making that artist an iconic star. “We usually look at a successful person and have no idea what goes into the making of their life. It is truly a blessing for me to have interacted with my guru at this personal level. Even today, I draw inspiration from many of her life incidents. Unfortunately, we lost her before we shot this documentary. However, all those interactions are forever etched in my memory,” she states. 

On naming her institute Tanmayi, Preethi shares that there Is certain magic in our performing arts. “Every time I dance, not necessarily only when I perform, even when I practice, I experience a state of joy. Furthermore, when I perform, there is a different kind of energy that takes me into a state of trance. It gives me a different high that stays with me for a while. This is blissful and very liberating but it is something you experience only when you are wholly absorbed into what you are doing. This “tanmayatvam” is something I didn’t experience with anything else in life and perfectly sums the feeling of joy, state of trance, ecstatic bliss. Hence the name Tanmayi for the institute,” she says before saying bye.